Perth 2012: Day One

Given the fact that I was away from a TV screen for most of the first two sessions, you might think I've got a bit of a nerve commenting on what went down on Day One in Perth, but there are a couple of points that have arisen over the past forty-eight hours that need to be commented on before things proceed too much further.

For a start there's the Ponting retirement, and one could spend a couple of hours poring over and reflecting on the various mushroom-like analyses of the man and his career that have sprung up over the past forty-eight hours.

Most of them, probably, had already been composed over the preceding twelve months and placed on hold until the appropriate time following the long-anticipated press conference. In any case I didn't spend much time on them, largely since the reason I was going to miss most of the first two sessions' TV coverage was our end of the month retired teachers' lunch.

Fine, you might think. Lunch, no problem there.

Ordinarily, yes. But this one was the end of the year special excursion to Montes on the Gloucester Passage, which tacked an hour and a bit onto the time allocated for a lengthy lunch to allow you to get there and a further hour and a bit to make the return journey.

So a two hour lunch, two and a half hours transit time and whatever time gets tacked on if the driver decides to divert to Cannonvale for retail therapy and a few more things that needed to be attended to before we left didn't leave much time for an extended perusal of the tributes.

I have my own axes to grind about Punter, largely involving his role in losing the Ashes twice and his exaggerated view of his own tactical nous, but he's definitely one of the best bats I've seen in the space of the last forty years.

I'm not into who was the best arguments, but he was definitely one of the greats in the modern era.
And I'm not interested in whatever speculation might be going around as to whether he fell, jumped or was pushed.

In the long run that issue doesn't matter.

From here on, questions about the longevity of whoever's sitting in the #4 batting slot will concern the incumbent's ability and current form rather than the appropriate time for the bloke to retire and the associated question of whether he's still got it.

The timing means we can look at things against Sri Lanka and hopefully have things reasonably sorted before the Ashes, so from here we'll be asking whether Khawaja, Forrest, Hughes or whoever has the goods rather than whether Ponting can still cut it at the top level.

The other matter that needs comment concerns the bowling, and the ups and downs associated with Australia's pace bowling stocks.

It wasn't that long ago we were looking at the injured list, wondering what happened to all the reserves and muttering things like I thought we were supposed to have a bit of depth in that department.

Now, until Lyon came on to bowl, we had four blokes (Starc, Hastings, Watson, Johnston) all having their first trundle for the series and reducing the #1 Test ranked nation to 6/75. Amla's run out helped, but by all accounts the three specialist quicks and Watson all bowled very well. That was the impression I got from the radio commentary once we were in the car for the return journey, anyway…

On yesterday's evidence, assuming they're still fit, any of the current trio could well be pushing Siddle and Hilfenhaus for a slot in Melbourne and beyond, with the likes of Bird, Butterworth, Feldman and Cutting all breathing down their necks.

One thing that comes through strongly here is the importance of Watson's role as an all-rounder, which is arguably what got Lyon into the eleven. I thought his 3/41 off 12 was a good performance by an offie in Perth on Day One. He's still very much a work in progress, but the key word here is progress, which is being made and is travelling in the right direction.

That, by the way, is something that didn't seem to happen with Hauritz and Krejza under the previous captain.

The important point here is that with Watson bowling a couple of sharpish three over spells he'll relieve some of the workload on the other quicks, provide an avenue to play a spinner and, hopefully, mean we're not likely to have anyone out of the pace battery getting through the workload that did for Siddle and Hilfenhaus on the way to Perth.

Give 'em all a run, shuffle and sample, mix and match and see where we are when it's time to select the side for the Ashes.

And that, of course, is the long term priority once this current game is done and dusted.